Inspired to Clean the Fridge November 20, 2008

I have been noticing for some time how much food I wind up not using before it goes bad. Mostly, it’s fruits and vegetables, and also some dairy. It usually has to do with good intentions of my higher self that my so-called CBA (can’t be arsed) self didn’t follow through on. In other words, I put all kinds of healthy goodies into my shopping basket which all required preparation and then wound up either eating out or just not getting to the wholesome foods.

A few weeks ago, Mrs. Green posted about her newly clean fridge. We bought our nice new refrigerator in February. It’s now November. The last time I cleaned it was, now, let me see….hmmm….Oh. Yeah, right. Never. That’s right, I’ve never cleaned it. And what’s worse, I have not really delved into the depths and removed all old scary items.

Mrs. Green’s post was weighing heavily on my conscience. The other day, a friend was over and peeked into my compost bin. She gave me a slap of reality. There was, for example, an entire bunch of celery in there. She commented that she’d have used some of the things I chose to ditch. Well, I mumbled, it had frozen. Well, she retorted, why not use it for soup? Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. I pretty much only use celery in tuna salad, which we don’t have all that often, so if it freezes before I get to it, I wouldn’t want to use it. (Yeah, of course it should not be freezing, but no refrigerator is perfect, even my amazing double door one with 22sf capacity and totally removable shelves that goes 0-60 in 7 seconds flat. I’ll twiddle the setting and see if I can get it to stop freezing my celery.)

My Gorgeous Huge Fridge

The combined effect of being called out for so much waste and Mrs. Green’s photo of her shiny new fridge inspired me to roll up my sleeves. It took a good 90 minutes to get all the food unloaded, shelves washed and rearranged to better suit my needs and food reloaded. It looks very spiffy in there now. I am a bit confused; we are a family of four and Mrs. Green is a family of three and their fridge has almost nothing in it. Ours is not exactly bursting, but it’s pretty darned full.

I wonder if the difference can be chalked up to cultural differences? I, for example, get most fruits and veggies plus raw milk, local eggs and cheese delivered weekly. And unfortunately, the farmer’s market, where I can buy locally grown organic produce and free range eggs and chicken is on exactly the same day. Seeing as that was yesterday, I am pretty well stocked. (And it didn’t help that I forgot what I’d ordered and doubled up on a number of things.) The health food store I go to has a 10% off sale on the following day, so I tend to pile on even more must-haves into an already bursting refrigerator (although this week I am going to try to skip it seeing as how next week is Thanksgiving and will be costly with the obligatory feast.) I guess that since Mrs. Green is in the UK, she probably shops a few times a week at a conveniently local store that she can walk to. And that is why her refrigerator looks like it could only feed everyone for that same day. Well, that’s my guess, anyway. And like I said, my fridge doesn’t always look so stuffed.

I do hope this exercise helps me better see what I’ve got in there so I can use it up in the proper order!